


Before the Sun Can Come Back Out

by Hooda



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bodhi is in the RAF because why not, Cassian is an American captain, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Jyn is a writer, Mexican accent, Music, Piano, Slow Burn, Writing, and Jyn likes it, hitting you with some old timey feels, like insanely slow burn, obscure parental death, red mug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 11:09:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10943271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hooda/pseuds/Hooda
Summary: There were thousands of miles of continents beyond her reach, just past the fingertip marks she leaves on the pane of glass as she gazes out nonchalantly, but always keeping in mind her new duties: the war, the world, her family, herself.“What are you writing about now?” Saw would hum more than ask as he stopped by her ajar door some nights to wish her a good night. He would watch as the shawl shifted around her shoulders in the little leap of surprise Jyn would give, often too enthralled in her ministrations to even notice an intruder.“Everything,” she would sigh quietly, finger tips catching the whisper ends of the paper and tucking her dreams in between the pages of a notebook.______Americans begin trickling into London by the boatload and British citizen Jyn Erso does not take to their persistent dating English women with promises of an end of the war.





	Before the Sun Can Come Back Out

**Author's Note:**

> Literally did not edit this beast of a story enough. If there are any mistakes, please let me know so I can fix it!
> 
> Link to the song I listened to the entire time I wrote this; partially for inspiration and as an idea of what Cassian would play on the piano: 
> 
>  
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSg3tBzAVFk
> 
> (Pointing eagerly upwards: guys oh my goodness look I finally decided to get a picture for my account!)

**_Before the Sun Can Come Back Out_ **

 

“However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there is life, there is hope.” ~ Stephen Hawking 

 

_______

**(1930 London, United Kingdom)**

_______

Though they may have lacked the genetic connections, Saw’s love of literature passed onto little Jyn so quickly it almost flew past his attention. In her small bedroom, above the living room with a clear view of the front street and two doors down from Bodhi, she spent hours lying atop her comforter with a collection of books. A desk laden with lined parchment and a few old ink pens Saw had long abandoned sat in the corner of the minuscule room.

Saw watched, helplessly proud in the best way, as little Jyn nurtured a respect for books and a penchant for words. Even with only a meager salary to raise Lyra’s children, Saw never failed to provide Jyn with a means of widening her goals as she swam through the voices of authors.

“What are you writing about now?” Bodhi would ask her as they sat around the old wooden dinner table together. They gorged on Henrietta’s famous potato and pork roast, bellies full and curiosities poised.

Little Jyn with her double braids and wool school dress would proudly hand over her worn notebook to her older brother, who in turn would carefully read every written word.

At only ten years old, Jyn was capable of catching her readers’ attention with only a few strokes of her pen, a short collection of sentences, and a very vivid imagination.

“And?” Saw asked between bites of potato. His dark eyebrows rise as he lifted a half empty glass of water to his lips. Bodhi, scarcely thirteen and steadily fighting a bout of acne at the time, hands the notebook back to Jyn.

But Bodhi has no words. He glances from his little sister to Saw, head on a constant swivel as he tries to think of sufficient words enough to describe Jyn’s young masterpiece. 

“She’s like a prodigy of literature.”

Henrietta, a Polish woman who lived across the street from their vertical flat and climbed the same ages as Saw, took to Jyn’s brilliance with a pen and paper by storm. At every birthday, every Christmas, every Easter, the woman had mustered enough to buy Jyn sets of pens and parchment.

“Never squander this girl’s gift, I tell you,” she warned Saw one night as she stayed a little beyond the weekly Sunday meals to help him mend torn clothes or maintain the rather rowdy first floor of the house, which always seemed to continuously get more untidy throughout the week.

“I’d never even dream of it,” Saw would sigh. His gaze would wander from his newspaper to the two young children quietly working on schoolwork under the small dining room light.

Lyra may never have had the opportunity to raise her own children, but despite his adoptive sister’s transgressions throughout life that led to her demise, Saw would only ever help his now two responsibilities grow to the best of their abilities. Even if that meant longer hours of grating work at the press, he would do anything necessary.

_______

**(1942 London, United Kingdom)**

_______

“European Theater of Operations, United States Army Headquarters,” Vivian reads aloud as the team of young women crowd at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue to get a better look.

Across the crowded street packed with cars and people interweaving their way through traffic lay the ETOUSA, the center of American and British military relations as America started feeding its resources into Europe. It was a pillar of hope for the United Kingdom, which had been laid half to waste by German fighter planes and bombings that raked London to pieces.

And with the ETOUSA came undoubtedly: soldiers.

The GI’s take the city by storm with their pressed military green uniforms and capping smiles. To the women of London, they were adoring and tenacious in their exploits for company, often times taking ladies on dates to the movies or off to a nice dinner at the Piccadilly Hotel just down a block.

Vivian and Lucinda took lead of the small group, walking  ahead of everyone else as they marched across the street when it was clear. They put their curled heads together, whispering, as they pointed out American soldiers.

Jyn, who stood right behind them and was trying to focus on the architecture of their mission today, unfortunately was subject to every word.

“Would you look at those polished boots!”

“Oh, they're so tall Viv!”

The ETOUSA headquarters from the inside was a marvelous blend of coffee scents wafting through cavernous halls, men in green and blue uniforms balking and trading information by sending their secretaries rushing to and fro, and the telltale clicking of typewriters in the background.

Rosie, the smaller of the five women, felt absolutely diminutive staring up at the tall ceilings of the lobby and the even taller men with boasting voices and booming orders all around.

“Can I help you, lassie?”

A wide-eyed GI, taller than even Bodhi, slinks up into Jyn’s peripheral confidently. His long legs walk almost leisurely to her short, quick stepping ones as she focuses ahead on her destination. She can practically smell the sly odor of midday booze and pig-headed narcism wafting off him.

“Quite fine, thank you,” she replies, curtly, just as Henrietta instilled in her before seeing her off at the Tube earlier that morning.

The older woman, for all her years spent running from the Nazi party and adopting the English lifestyle for her own, had surprised Jyn with her plethora of opinions on foreign men.

(“Scums,” she’d spat as the train squealed into sight, “but bloody needed to win this war against those totalitarian pigs. Bah, but don’t you fall for their smiles and charming chocolate eyes when they beg you on dates!)

But the golden haired American, like the unfortunate majority of men in this world, takes her refusal as a sign to begin pestering for a second chance.

“You’re sure? Can’t I help you dance with those beautiful legs off tonight at a party at the Piccadilly?” he pushes, smiling at the distraught look on Jyn’s face as she pushes past him for the Employer’s office.

“Quite fine,” Jyn hissed.

Vivian, as oblivious and boy-hung as ever, piped up from a few paces over when she spotted the obvious discontent brewing on the American GI’s face.

“Oh, Jyn’s no fun,” Vivian quipped, arm coming to rest lazily upon the GI’s forearm and dragging his eyes from Jyn to her own golden curls and bright red lipstick just waiting to be smudged. “But I’d love to dance!”

“You would now?” The GI’s face completely changes from gloomy resignation to glee as he walks back down the corridor they just trekked. Jyn barely registers their distanced squabbling and flirting as she pulls Rosie and the three others into the Employer’s office, ready to help the nation’s duties.

______

“The ETOUSA?”

At their small dinner table, the same one that had been a constant throughout their entire lives for as long as Jyn can remember, Bodhi sits aghast. He stares at his younger sister with a fork laden with chicken, an arm suspended midair in its journey to his mouth.

Saw picks tenaciously at his meal, eyes downcast and shoulders tense.

“Yes, I registered on Friday.”

“Two days ago?” Bodhi asks quietly. Saw stays silent.

“Yes.”

Jyn half jumps in her chair when Bodhi lets his fork clatter loudly onto his plate and drops his head into the cradle of his palms. The room stays hauntingly colder despite the warmth of Henrietta’s delicious meal.

The war was a difficult topic to raise around the family structure. With his ghosts from the Great World War in the early century still plaguing Saw, there was no doubt the family would be partisan on the subject. It had been half a shock, really, when Bodhi came out about his dreams to be a pilot in the Royal Air Force. He had joined with his best mates Luke, and Han, and Wedge.

(“Are you sure?” Saw had asked uncertainly for what seemed like the millionth time, trying to crack a beaming Bodhi for flaws in his career ambition.

“I am, Pa, I am,” he retaliated gleefully and full bright idealism. So much so in fact, Jyn could practically feel it radiating off her adoptive brother from the foyer and all the way up to her hiding spot on the top step of the staircase.)

Saw eventually speaks up from his end of the table, to the left of Bodhi and opposite from Jyn’s shriveled posture.

“Did Henrietta help you?”

His voice was strained, like he was almost out of breath, but clear as always. Bodhi breathes in sharply but does not lift his head up.

“Yes, she did,” Jyn squeaks.

Saw raises his eyes to his daughter, but for the first time in twenty-one years he sees Lyra’s daughter. She sat there in her woolen skirt with her blouse tucked into the waistline, with her beautiful curled pinned back around and her bangs tucked into the neat bun that rest behind her neck. The fingers of her right hand were calloused on the sides from years of having gripped a pen with the conviction of the greatest journalist born to into a masculinely dominated world of words. Though she did not know it, Jyn radiated with her mother’s glow, a peace and a sting to do what was right for the world blending together until he could not tell their two characters apart.

“I’m a typer,” Jyn starts slowly, calmly, quietly. Bodhi lets his hands down and stares at his plate morosely instead of looking at his sister. “They need help transcribing documents and such.”

“But they're Yanks,” Bodhi says quietly.

“Yes, but it’s work and a way to keep the war going as smoothly as possible.” The reasoning had sounded to resolute and strong in her mind, but they sound small to her ears when she says them aloud.

With a sigh Saw picks himself up and out of his chair at the head of the table. Before he reaches for his half-eaten plate, he looks Jyn squarely in the eyes. Green meets brown; budding naive hope to reviving past.

“The war changes people.”

“It’s not as if I’ll be on the front lines. I’m a woman.”

Saw shakes his head.

“No, but sometimes the messengers are subjected to writing the aftermaths.” He takes his plate in one hand and glass in the other before stepping around the table towards the tiny kitchen. There was a drop of sauce on one of his grey suspenders, just a centimeter from his pressed white shirt.

Saw retires to the privacy of his office, whether to write in his black leather-bound journal or to smoke a cigar over a set of newspapers, Jyn was not sure. Her dinner cold and abandoned, she turned to her brother. The look in his eyes cuts off whatever words rise in her throat.

“Do you know how Mum and Pa met?”

“Not exactly, a dance I think?” was the timid reply.

“A dance, but it was with a swank scientist. She was the department’s secretary. He was responsible for the design of many, _many_ deadly war weapons.”

Jyn never muttered a word, instead letting the cold tone Bodhi uses wash over her. There were only a few handful times she had been in contact with their father, but Jyn was never prone to bringing up her biological family.

Sometimes, it was too embarrassing.

(“Oi! It’s the half Germ girl again,” a boy had screeched to his mates as Jyn hurriedly walked home from school. She had to cower her head when her cheeks illuminated with a fresh blush of red. She hugged her books tighter.

“Is your daddy gonna blow some more of our Brits up? Huh? Half Germ you are, you twiggy little swine!”)

“What is your point Bodhi?”

“I… I just want you to know that no one, not even the sweepers on the airfields or a typer at the ETOUSA is safe from war. I just… I just want you to stay safe, Jyn.”

Unbeknownst to the pair, Saw had stopped at the entrance of the kitchen to listen carefully. He thinks to a simpler time when the world faced the first of its similar dilemma now, how he had mirrored similar words to his Lyra.

______

Amongst the constant clattering of typewriter keys pushing down with unknowing force is the occasional glimmer of a giggle. The women are assigned to desks throughout the ETOUSA building, close enough to find a friend to talk to but spread out far enough that they are kept to their tasks under the scrutinizing eye of the officers that swap between offices.

Jyn, choosing to be oblivious to the constant chatter of women exploring just how far American soldiers will take them, focuses solely on her work.

Her mornings start sharply a quarter before six, well before the sun has a chance to rise and enough time for her to prepare Saw’s customary coffee and biscuits. He helps himself to the newspaper as she clambers down the old front steps of their flat, muddled winter skies overcast with clouds and the London fog lifting like the sleep from its citizens eyes. With her scarf pressed around her chin and old wool coat itching through her equally stifling woolen skirt, Jyn made her way every morning to the Tube for a ride into the bustling city.

“Oh Jyn,” Rosie starts one morning as they clamber up the ETOUSA steps in tandem, their thick wooden kitten heels hitting the wet stone, “don’t you just adore these American soldiers’ company?” She watched as her friend quickly shot a glance at the Avenue from the top of the steps, watched as her curls pinned back into her small bun swiveled from side to side, looking for the _adoring_ or _charming_ in the brusque of these strange men.

Jyn wrinkles her nose at the sight of the green pressed uniforms, their cocky smiles as they lift cigars to their lips, later blowing out smoke as easily as their catcalls. She turns to her friend, who had gone off to bask in the attention of a pair of American GI’s, the chains of their dog-tags visible from beneath their hastily tucked collars.

______

The only highlight Jyn finds in the dutiful expansive grey of work is that the officer she is assigned to aid is not as bull-headed as all Americans she has met. He was older, at least the same age as Saw but stern in a way that reminds her just how important her work means here, unlike the majority of women her age that took it as an opportunity to bounce from date to date.

Major Davits Jameson was a strong man, both in reason and in body, which Jyn thought quietly to herself to be the right model for any man of the army, whether he came from a background of being the most pompous Brit or the lousiest American.

More than anything, he praises her profusely on her literate talents. It always brought her to a blushing standstill, not quite sure how to address the praise from someone that was not Bodhi, or Saw, or even Henrietta.

“Tell me Ms. Erso,” Major Jameson asks one day in his odd ‘Yorker’ accent, or whatever Vivian was calling the sly way the American men from the Eastern coasts lilted their words, “do you hope?”

“Hope?” she repeats precariously as she fixes a paper that had jammed on her typewriter. The question was so far out of the extraordinary, it almost made Jyn laugh to think about. “How can I hope amidst another World War?”

Major Jameson leaned at the doorway of his office, arms crossed and eyes scrutinizing the ease at which Jyn’s nimble fingers pulled the paper from the machine without so much as a tear. She does not notice the way he watches her carefully reset another piece of white parchment with a respect to the blankness.

“Before the war, did you ever dream of being a writer?”

Jyn freezes, planted to the spot and unsure whether to pretend she never heard over her focus of fixing her typewriter or to face someone who stares her down with cold eyes despite the warmth of the sunlight glinting off them.

“Once upon a time, yes, but now… Well, I can only safely say that someday, I _hope_ I can. God Bless we live to see that day.”

______

She begins writing for herself in the quiet hours late at night, huddled in the corner of her tiny bedroom after late winter meals with Henrietta’s soft chuckles and Saw’s calming demeanor leading the conversations late over meals.

Her fingers were not only calloused on the sides of her fingers, but on the pads from the constant pressure of typing. More often than not, her gaze wandered to the street just beyond the window of her room. It overlooked passerby pedestrians on their treks home through the grueling cold that settled in everyone’s bones. It had been her key to inspiration when lacking the proper characters for her stories.

Once upon a time as a child Jyn had found comfort that the window was a source of mystery and longing for adventure.

Like many of her time and generation, she was brought up to believe in the possibility of a better and newer future, structured and gleaming, from which the world would centrally rebuild itself up after the Great War.

There were thousands of miles of continents beyond her reach, just past the fingertip marks she leaves on the pane of glass as she gazes out nonchalantly, but always keeping in mind her new duties: the war, the world, her family, herself.

So she keeps to the pen and lined parchment, dreaming in black inks and soft blue lines etched into the thin white canvases.

“What are you writing about now?” Saw would hum more than ask as he stopped by her ajar door some nights to wish her a good night. He would watch as the shawl shifted around her shoulders in the little leap of surprise Jyn would give, often too enthralled in her ministrations to even notice an intruder.

“Everything,” she would sigh quietly, finger tips catching the whisper ends of the paper and tucking her dreams into a notebook, carefully folded from prying eyes should it be thrown from its case of brief safety.

______

Bodhi writes home just after the start of December. He was too far from London to come home for Christmas festivities, but wished with every ounce of his heart that he could be there to watch the glee in Jyn’s face if she had been able to receive his gift, or to see the proud smile Saw would flash him after his recent success to being promoted Second-Captain and now a commanding fighter pilot. Jyn rubs her fingers over the letter again and again, trying very hard to keep the lump in her throat at bay as Henrietta begins helping to clean the plates. Saw leaves her to her thoughts, alone, having already read the letter.

She memorizes every word, runs the pads of her fingers over every scribble that was very unique for being her brother’s. She keeps the letter tucked in a little box under her bed, along with the rest of her most private writings.

______

**(1943 London, United Kingdom)**

______

“He is absolutely _dreamy,_ ” Rosie sighed as she lay spread-eagle and face to the ceiling of her rather drab flat. Her eyes glossed over with a content glow, her lips red from her rich lipstick, struggling to hide the occasional giggle.

Jyn finds someplace to sit on the end of the bed. Rosie and her flatmates were getting to be the fastest of friends and bonding over their rush to move out of their parents’ homes. But privately Jyn never minded the calm thump of Saw’s  foot as he hummed to the tunes on the wireless, or the weekly visits Henrietta paid them with her scrumptious Polish recipes, or the small room she inhabited since she had first come to live with Saw.

(She was too young to later remember anything as an adult, but to remember flashes of infinite train lines and Bodhi holding her hand as they walked through a station to the waiting arms of a familiar man with mahogany skin and who smelled of old ink was one of the first and most treasure memories she would ever hold.)

Jyn gazed at her friend now, six months working for the ETOUSA taking their toll on her once shy mate. Rosie now preferred the attention of American GI’s to that of a fellow Englishman. The exotic men crossed oceans to help fight for her country, which was enough to make Rosie swoon with vivid imaginations of romance. Nylons were a luxury prohibited to the women of England, but a lady could find a good supply of not only the nets, but also lipsticks, perfumes.

They fell for the nicknames, the coddling, the dates.

With the constant influx of American soldiers, Jyn finds herself pestered and cornered on her usual route from work to home and vice versa. They were everywhere, those damned green uniforms with their smug smiles and flashing egos. They were at the Piccadilly Hotel and the local night clubs and bars until the owners were pushing tipsy servicemen out the door.

“Oh come on sugar,” they pestered as Jyn beelined for the front doors to ETOUSA one Saturday morning, “just a movie and some dinner afterwards?”

And each time, Jyn rejected them. But there was a way to rejecting a man, especially an American in a uniform, is what she quickly learned.

First, she needed to feign interest for an all but five minutes. Smiling was never prohibited as they came near, testing the waters for resistance. The last touch was to either carefully excuse herself from the area and pretend a friend across the way had been calling for her, or to let them down with a clipped tone.

But these were American GI men, Jyn also realized after going into her seventh month working dutifully for the ETOUSA and Major Jameson. They were thousands of miles from their country, their motherland, their families. Off across the Atlantic they were sent to fight a war that was not entirely their own but at the same time the tipping tide of the world. Jyn was beyond her days and her words as she quietly copied forms and wrote notes, taking in every aspect of the war and the slow or sudden toll it took on every man around her.

They were desperate for companionship and passion, so they took to the host women of Britain. And they also learned very quickly to avoid Jyn Erso.

______

It was only a quarter before eight, but Jyn was hurrying as quickly to her desk as possible with the blushing shame of tardiness written across her face for all to see. Her coat was half soaked with rainwater and her shoes were an absolute sodden mess from all the puddles she braved through for the sake of getting to work on time.

She was lucky to find the Major’s office door shut as she rushed to her desk and left her coat and purse hanging on the rack. Droplets dripped as steadily as the water coming down the ends of her bangs, landing softly on her green blouse. Her hands immediately took to the typewriter in time as the door to the office opened widely.

Major Jameson stepped out first, allowing the way for a younger gentlemen to step through secondly. Jyn kept her eyes down on the page in front of her, fingers typing diligently to keep from shaking with cold tremors.

“It is truly an honor to be working with you Major,” the second man says as he reaches for the Major’s hand to shake. “I await your further orders.”

Jyn momentarily glances looks up.

He was unlike the other soldiers that had passed through these halls and offices of the Intelligence department of the ETOUSA as they wound their way through looking for commanding officers who called on them. His tan shirt was loose from where it stuck out from underneath a leather jacket riddled with creases from use. It was a warm brown color, almost as soft as the boots he donned, green fatigues tucked carefully and laced up carefully.

“Captain Andor, I know you're a good man. And I know you're one of the best soldiers on this damn block of the city,” the Major chuckles as he claps the younger man on the shoulder and gives it a good shake before excusing himself for a meeting with a leading British General.

Like most arriving soldiers, he had a good amount of scruff on his face from the weeklong voyage. His tan skin was sun kissed in a way that practically radiated sunny days and burning on a beach somewhere, no war or foggy overcast skies to be seen.

He nods at her in greeting as he passes Jyn’s desk. She refocuses on her work, content to not have been caught being late for the first time at ETOUSA.

______

It rains steadily all week. The cold settles into the bones of the people and the buildings alike. They creak with moans of additional weight and gloomy stress as the pounding rain continues to pound away at London’s miserable excuse of a late February.

Though she never makes another known late entry to work again, Jyn still pounds through the front doors of the ETOUSA building with sopping hair and an equally disdained temper. She takes the steps to shake her legs back into feeling, letting the blood rush quickly to her toes before she spent the rest of the day at a table typing away with the calloused pads of her fingers.

But the last thing Jyn expects to face when she is tucking her loose wet bangs behind her cold ears and rubbing her hands together against the cold in an effort for warming friction, was to find a mug of steaming coffee awaiting her on her desk. She stopped in her tracks by the entrance to her workspace, unsure what to do or where the mug came from.

It was tall and red, like a bell pepper, but filled to the brim with rich, dark, steaming coffee. The aroma filled the air, tickling Jyn’s nose in its rich scent.

“The English _do_ drink coffee, or was I mistaken in thinking they strayed no further than their teas?” an accented voice chuckled from behind Jyn. She turned, half startled, to see Captain Andor watching her closely.

His pressed green uniform fit him perfectly. Everything from the cut of his collar to the hems of the sleeves was pressed into perfection. Instead of the casual brown leather boots she had first seen him in, this time the Captain wore a tall pair of black uniform boots, so high he could wade in the puddles out on the sidewalks and never get a toe even close to getting doused.

Jyn eyes the Captain warily, who in turn stares back; waiting.

“I myself do not mind the occasional cup. But I’d be disappointed if the strongest ingredient in that mug there was cream, especially after the long haul of a week we've been having here,” Jyn quips, steady, on her feet and ready.

The Captain chuckles and runs a hand through his tempest black hair.

“Sorry to disappoint, but unfortunately I could just find the cream.”

Jyn lifts the mug from her desk and blows on it just enough to make the coiling steam roll in a different direction. The aroma was entrancing and inviting after the long morning she trekked through to get to the ETOUSA.

But multiple similar beverage-based invitations like these from soldiers always had Jyn leading some poor bloke on to think that by drinking whatever it was he offered the woman, she owed him her attention for the evening.

“I’m Cassian,” the Captain offers cheerily just as Jyn was about to speak.

“I’m not interested.”

His eyebrows shoot up close to his hairline, which was peculiarly low and shaggy to the strict norms of the military. His facial hair followed the same lead.

“I was just being polite,” Cassian mutters, instead clearing his throat and letting the small previous expression of morning delight drop.

Jyn cradles the mug sheepishly in her hands. Her fingers bask in the evaporating heat of the coffee, stealing the warmth for their own. Her face flushes pink with realization of her hasty mistake at assuming a captain’s intentions.

“Sorry,” she squeaks, trying to amend the meeting. “It’s just that every time an American offers me a drink, they expect it to be a sign of interest…”

Cassian lets out a breath and shakes his head. The hair hanging just centimeters from his eye-line shifts with the movement.

“We’re not _all_ that insufferable you know.”

Jyn finally lifts the mug to her lips and takes a long drink of the coffee. It was divine compared to the leaky mess she would pull together in the dregs of the morning. The cream soothed the bitterness of the drink, gliding and warming Jyn from the roots of her bangs to the tips of her toes.

She had subconsciously closed her eyes to better focus on the lingering flavor when she pressed her lips together and pursed them in contentment. When she opens them again, she sees Cassian smiling just a little bit.

Jyn offers a hand and holds the mug with the other.

“I’m Jyn, and no, I won’t go on a date with you though I drank the coffee.”

His hand was firm but calloused in some corners. It was warm, too.

“Pleasure to meet you Jyn. Give me back my mug whenever you're done.”

______

The words begin to swirl together.

_Death counts._

_Mortality rate._

_Ammunition carrier._

_Shipments on command._

_New recruits rising to the war efforts._

Every little statistic grates on Jyn’s nerves. Percentages flash behind her closed eyelids some night when she tries to push sleep upon herself. They were only the surface reports that she was in charge of copying.

It was like the war was spreading itself out in front her eager hands that once craved the suspense to write about in her private columns at night. It beckoned her closer, intrigued Jyn. The reality was there to slap her cold and to open her eyes to the real world.

She walks through the lobby of the ETOUSA each day, passing soldiers in green pressed uniforms and shiny dog-tags. Unbeknownst to them, a sympathizer in a skirt floats past them with her own callouses lining her hands and her own armor as she shrugged on a heavy woolen coat to brave the winter.

“We are not the men we used to be,” Bodhi tells her one afternoon as they sat at a local pub after Jyn’s work hours were up for the day. He stabbed into a piece of fish, pushing the chips over and avoiding Jyn’s eyes.

Their time apart had been riddled with letters and clipped skirmishes.

His hair was clipped per regulations but there was the telltale fuzz of day old unshaved face peeking out from behind his collar. Bodhi preferred the comfort of his coat to the provided leisure uniforms the other RAF pilots were so prone to don during their holidays off to visit family.

“No one is, whether they are civilian or soldier.”

Jyn thinks back to the earlier German bombings that raked London apart. Each detonation either hit the city or the rural surroundings. Children and parents alike would flee like rodents to the safety of the Tube, the safety of underground bunkers, anything to keep from the shrapnel of blistering war. She reminiscences to nine months earlier when she was a timid and naive supporter of a war and who sat at the table and listened to her brother’s warnings of change without a second thought.

“No, we aren’t: are we,” Bodhi finished as he rose to pay.

From the corner of the near-empty pub’s dining room, a trio of customers stands in the presence of the wireless that spews the names of the dead. One of the listeners was a woman with a beautiful mink coat, a set of pearls adorning her pale earlobes. Her cheeks were shiny with shed tears and face blank.

______

He brings her coffee more than just the one time. It only happens when London was experiencing its usual bouts of heavy rain, the introduction to a gloomy spring out of winter.

The coffee was divine to Jyn’s clammy cold hands from having to wring the rainwater from her bangs or the edges of her sodden skirts.

Her face glows with content regardless of the fact that the workloads were getting heavier, the reports getting longer and more detailed to copy, the rushing to and from offices across the headquarters taking their toll on her rather flat soled and uncomfortable kitten heels.

“We have to keep up with the trends,” Lucinda giggles half-heartedly as they saunter arm in arm past a stand littered with newspapers and posters of the war. But how could they look to the ideals of what skirts were in season or what pins to use for their hair when there were few fashion magazines since the nation’s legislature of the need to conserve and ration materials for the army.

Clothing was to be mended if it still fit, food was to be proportioned carefully throughout the week, coffee and nylons were to be reduced. 

It was no surprise to Jyn when she unearthed where Cassian’s source of coffee was stemming from in the mornings he left a mug on her desk.

There were pots of the steaming drink in the men’s rooms, a secluded section of the headquarters meant for the sole purpose of replenishing male officers throughout the day with invigorating coffee or newspapers that smelled of cigar ashes, their daily puzzles scratched out with black pen ink.

She thanks Cassian with small smiles when she flits past his diminutive office situated at the far corner of the headquarters. Sometimes she drops off the mug if she has the time. Otherwise, he finds it before the day is over and she is out on a run for Major Jameson.

It was a quiet agreement, a simple acquaintance in the fog of perfumes and haze of green uniforms as Americans swooped into London by the swarming shipload, picking up British women with new nylons and exoticism.

______

They spend some nights hidden beneath the earth of their homes like ants fleeing the boot. The ground trembles with the detonation blasts of bombs throughout the city, the groundings of planes shot out of the night sky that was riddled with gleaming stars so unaware of the hell wrought down below them.

Henrietta helps the local children as they shiver under their thin night clothes, the older ones nearing their teenage years shrugging off their coats for the sake of their little siblings. Their tiny eyes bulge with each shriek of engines overhead, the rattling shakes and dust falling down on the heads of the bunker inhabitants, staring at their mothers who sit hand in hand around them, whispering prayers like the words of a God would shield them from all harm.

Saw pulls his cap on over Jyn’s head when the dust starts to unbearably fall into her eyes. She holds a small box tightly to her chest, the most precious of  testaments she owns hidden under the lock and soft carvings on the lid. It was a dark and rich mahogany color, lined with stars dropping from the corners like they were shooting across her greatest works. Her fingers shake just slightly as she clamps down tighter on the box with each passing shake of the ground.

In the hours of the morning when the sun begins to rise and the world around them goes silent, Jyn finally feels her chest breathe. The war had flown in for a few brief hours and riddled their civilian lives with glimpses of the front lines, bombs and terror reigning over them for a few short hours.

They emerge from the bunker, unscathed and exhausted, covered in dust to find their homes still standing. Other parts of the city simmer in the ashes of the fallen, smoke billowing in great duvets towards the sky.

They emerge, but they continue with their days like the war at their doorstep every night was the norm.

______

Amongst the company of women or the slew of drinking spots throughout the city, the Americans take well to the movies, or to live music. The Piccadilly was known for having moved an entire piano into its lobby for the most musically lively of GI’s to take the night away with giddy riffs and enticing their blushing dates to dance.

Jyn watches precariously as Vivian and the other women take to the hotel in swarm one night when a group of soldiers announces a festivity for the night.

“We’re celebrating some birthdays,” they tell the smiling women, “and we want to invite you all to hear what American music sounds like!”

Jyn, who felt that the women were getting over their heads by letting the foreign charm wash over them, does not go. Instead, she takes the extra hours at the ETOUSA with an exhausted glee for the little extra pay.

Which is why, at almost a quarter to eight o'clock at night, Major Jameson opens the door to his office to the sigh of a destitute Jyn who just realized she missed the early train home. He shakes his head but taps the end of her desk to get her to lift her head from her arms.

“Go take a break,” he tells her sternly as she begins to protest and apologize at once. “Don’t worry about the office - no one is working this late right now.” He flashes her a brief and exhausted grin of encouragement, motioning towards the door for her to understand his meaning.

She gathers her coat in one arm and her purse in the other as she leaves.

The ETOUSA was typically not as energetic late in the day as it was throughout the early hours. Where before one had to make his way through the cluttered desks and rushing secretaries, now the ambiance was calmer and orderly with exhaustion. The lights overhead were all on since the lack of sufficient natural light and the constant wafting smell of coffee and smoke made its way through the main corridors.

To avoid anyone asking her to the Piccadilly, Jyn takes a staircase in the back of the office building. Her heels click against the wood and the halls were quietly empty as she pulled her thick wool coat over her shoulders.

She stops in her tracks at the whisper of music.

It was faint, so much in fact that it was almost drowned out with the pounding of rain on the side of the building. It was piano, unmistakable even from a distance, but it draws Jyn’s interest in nonetheless.

She wanders down a few halls, quiet as a mouse despite the heels and constantly looking back towards the front of the building where the doors out to the Tube were.

He sits on an old bench with his uniform jacket draped over the end, the sleeves of his white shirt underneath rolled to the elbow and relaxed in the privacy of the tiny room. Throughout the half ajar door, Jyn glimpses his fingers lifting across the keys softly and easily, like he was bored, but wanted to play like it was air for him to breathe.

The piano was covered in a fine layer of dust, like it had been forgotten.

It was beautiful, the sound the keys made in the small room, the music wafting through the half opened door. It was private, but she could not help but stand there for a few moments, listening at the grace of the music.

Which is why, when Cassian drops his forearms suddenly on the keys with a stressed force Jyn draws in a breath too deep, too loud, too quick in surprise.

Cassian drops his head into the space between his arms and lets the weight of his shoulders push down. After a moment he slumps back upright and rubs at his face. The exhaustion was written across his features as easily as the marks left on Jyn’s hands from years of writing with a pen.

“I thought it was beautiful,” Jyn blurts before she can stop to think.

Cassian visibly startles at the sound of her voice, like he never expected anyone to follow him down the halls to the privacy of the piano room. It could also have been passed as a storage space. There were a few boxes spread through out with an equal amount of dust covering their tops.

“How long have you been standing there?” His voice was guarded, curious, almost as defensive as a child caught where he should not be

Jyn leans her shoulder against the doorframe, her purse in front of her body, like a barrier. She watches as Cassian fumbles with thy key cover, letting the wood casing softly fall closed with a precise care.

“Only for a few minutes; I was just on my way out for the night and heard music from the back stair case. I was curious.”

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he mutters, shrugging on his leather brown jacket. The creases ease around the planes of his toned shoulders like the garment was made to fit his body specifically. Through the very little scruff that had begun to prickle down his jawline, Jyn notices the faint tinge reddening of embarrassment, of being caught somewhere he was not supposed to be?

“Oh.”

She should leave; turn, forget this ever happened, pray he still finds the benevolence to be kind enough to bring her his servings of coffee from the officers’ lounge on frigid morns.

He sits there on that bench, the most forlorn expression whispering across his face, waiting for her to prance off to her employers to tattle that a minority officer was breaking rules.

But Jyn was British, not from America like Cassian was, so therefore does not think differently of the tone of his skin or the lilt of accent that curves around his English when he speaks. She does not understand what severities he would face as a man of minority descent breaking clear rules in the American Army. So he sits, tense, waiting.

“If you don’t tell anyone I play back here, I’ll keep bringing you coffee every morning.” Her eyes flash to meet his, green as the rolling hills just beyond the city limits and inquisitive at his offer.

It takes Jyn all but about seconds to have her answer.

“Make sure to add extra cream. It makes the coffee divine to drink.”

Cassian watches as the ends of her dark blue coat spin to slink back down the hall she so masterfully toed her way down to investigate the sounds of his music. She leaves behind a captain grinning with half-disbelief at his luck.

______

“Come out with me tonight.”

The younger American GI had followed her from the front entrance of ETOUSA to her desk on the second floor. He was young, too much for Jyn to feel comfortable taking on his offer at an outing to the local movies.

And he was too pushy for Jyn’s comfort.

With brown chocolate curls and whiskey toned eyes, he was a real catch. Bright with hope and idealism, he was an obvious freshman off the boat and no one in the building had made an effort to warn him of Jyn’s proficiency to turning down men.

To her immense relief, Cassian appears around the corner, dapper and dressed to impeccable measures in his green uniform. He saunters in, steaming red mug in hand, to Jyn’s very timely aid.

“Just one date,” the cadet GI tries again, eyes hopeful and mouth quirking in a charming manner that does not pull over his target of affections.

“I could hear the lady rejecting you from the hallway, cadet,” Cassian quips. He was the perfect image of rugged handsomeness and cool machismo confidence with a hand tucked loosely into a pocket and mug casually in the other hand. He comes up to stand beside the younger soldier, swagger and confidence in full swing.

Jyn can barely contain a laugh as Cassian sets the mug down on her desk, winks at her, clicking his tongue as he said, “See you at eight tonight? The usual?” It was absurdly entertaining to Jyn.

She winked back, cheeks flushing and smiling so much she almost blinds the young GI. He watches the interaction with growing envy, face turning shades between blue, purple and tomato red. He pounds away before Cassian can say anything else to make the situation any more mortifying, almost slamming the office door on his way out and back down to the lobby.

Cassian swings back to face Jyn, who laughs outright so hard she has to wipe emerging tears from the crinkles at her eyes.

______

In truth, Jyn had met Cassian in the little far off room at exactly eight o’clock, which was her normal dismissal time from work. For the third time in two weeks they had found the time to sneak down one by one.

She was a dutiful single audience member.

At first, she had deigned to stand by the door, not particularly sure being there with Cassian was even a good idea for either one of them. But they agreed to keep the door shut just enough to not let anyone hear them easily.

The second time, Jyn had found a sturdy enough box to rest on and tap her foot to the rapid and heartfelt tempo of the music. Casein’s hands were like magic as they raced across the keys, never stopping for a breath or a mistake. Some tunes she recognized immediately while others Cassian had to explain their American origins.

By the third time they had met together, Jyn had bravely sat next to Cassian on the wooden bench. Curiosity outweighed every rational thought as she got a firsthand view of which keys Cassian played amorously, every nerve and fiber of his mind concentrated to making the utmost perfect flow of music.

But the music was not the only piece between them that connected the budding companionship. Food, Cassian quickly learned, was a keystone in Jyn’s rather rationed lifestyle. Her eyes could light up at the sight of a bran muffin in the morning, or even a plate of fresh fish and chips.

“Your accent is so exotic,” Jyn commented one afternoon as they enjoyed a late lunch at a small sandwich shop just down the ETOUSA’s main avenue of commotion. American men milled around in droves, smoking their thin cigarettes by the pack and ordering their spirits by the bottle.

“Exotic how?” Cassian chuckled as swallowed a bite.

“I’ve been working for the ETOUSA now almost nine months. My ear is open to every accent in the American forces that pass through the headquarters, but never have I heard someone quite like you.”

Cassian’s smile faltered just a cinch, but Jyn would never understand the circumstances Cassian faced each day surrounded by his own comrades, some of which he even carried authority over.

“You mean a Mexican accent?”

“Is that it?” She dabs with dainty precision a napkin to her lips, wiping any crumbs that may have clung to her lips. A moment later she was pulling out a small notepad no larger than Cassian’s hand and a tiny pencil, jotting down a few short notes.

 _Mexican accent,_ she scribbles, but then was stuffing the notepad away quicker than Cassian can register.

“I like to base my characters off real world inspirations,” Jyn explains as he politely walks her back to her desk before returning to his respective duties.

“Since I was little, I’d found the people who I see around me everyday, stranger or friend, as an inspiration to write about. One time, I wrote an entire short story piece on a man who's life revolved in grey. It was about a drab life as a washer in the Worker’s district, about how he had to endure his wife’s trouble as a suffragette, and would later have to leave her because of the shame she brought him.” Jyn hung her coat on a hook by the desk and took her place in her seat, the door to the Major’s office in perfect view.

Behind the desk, behind the stacks of papers waiting to be typed out and copied and delivered, Jyn looked like a master at work on her typewriter. Her fingers could fly across the buttons like Cassian’s hands a piano.

They each played their own keys in life, clicking monotonously for one and clinking musically for the other. Their genres in life mixed like grey meeting a rainbow, English meeting Hispanic, a secondhand witness of war to the one in charge, a blue wool coat sodden with rainwater to a bright red coffee mug.

For a breath of the war, Jyn was given the blessed chance to open her eyes beyond the grey fog that had enveloped her life and ambitions, covered them like a stifling blanket. For once she was seeing in color. The world was being torn between ash and blood, red and blue, good and evil; but Jyn was seeing it all for real now through new eyes.

Her writing became littered with colors, heavy reds of battle or love; touching hues of blues and greens that tell tales of hidden valleys and vast oceans just beyond the English shorelines; dazzling gilded dresses of gowns.

Soon, pages were building in earnest at the edge of her desk. She could not stop from pouring herself more deeply than she had ever been able to in her young life. Even Bodhi notices a change in the wording of her letters out to him.

“You sounded happy in them,” he explains with a curious grin when he comes home for a week of rare leave. He carefully sifts through the small stack of notebooks on her tiny corner desk, pens littered about and pages laden.

“I am,” she tells her brother as he opens a notebook, “I really am.”

She thinks about how they sneak down to their little piano room with the boxes littered about for them to lay their jackets; his brown leather one next to her woolen blue. Music mixed with little laughter, jokes spun from thin air.

Their stories come easily, too.

She tells him about Bodhi and he about his little sister Janina. He was from Southern New Mexico, close enough to the border he could almost see Mexico if he squinted hard enough from the roof of his parents’ home. She in turn tell him about her German birth and late English parents, about Saw, about Henrietta. It was amazing to watch the stress lift momentarily from his face when he described his overweight chihuahua, Taco.

Jyn could sit there in their little room forever, listening, telling, forgetting the chaos that was the looming war and the work needed to be done upstairs.

It was living through a friendship, a bond so familiar and bright that it almost brought light to the dark nights when bombs dropped from the stars and her workload became increasingly heavier with the arrival of a looming military operation in the horizon; launching sometime in the next year, she had heard.

His hands were warm and calloused from combat training when they sit shoulder to shoulder on the bench on those rare nights. Sometimes, Cassian takes the lead and lets her rest her hands over his, like a child would, as he carried them both across the keys.

______

And then one day, the coffee stops coming.

It was a Monday after a particularly nasty weekend storm. There had been some minor flooding in some parts of the city, parts where soldiers were needed to help barricade streets with spared sandbags to keep some streets from getting too flooded.

So she settles on blaming the weather for his lack of morning routine. There may have been a possibility he was sick, or out helping in the aid.

By the third day of no red mug on her desk when she arrives to work, Jyn is wringing her hands and looking for a moment to whisk to the tiny corner office she was so familiar with sneaking down to during her brief lunch break.

She should have known nothing was permanent about the war the second she began her job for the ETOUSA, should have realized the signs herself when she was typing up regiment deployment forms for the Major’s officers, should have never let herself take root with someone so intriguing.

It was like the world was draining of color again.

“Can I help you?” the new officer asks, golden hair flashing under the harsh office lights. It was Cassian’s familiar desk, but bare of his touch. It was his office, but not his at the same time.

Jyn stood there a minute.

“I was looking for Captain Andor.”

The tall blond man smiles gently at her, fixing the title bar on the door before turning to her politely. The bar read “Nicholas Tudyk.”

“I’m sorry miss, but Captain Andor and his company were deployed for a mission two days ago. I wish I could tell you more, but it is a confidential assignment.” He truly looks apologetic when he delivers the news, even offering Jyn a seat when she sways in place for a moment.

Her heart was racing, like it needed to catch up to a captain who knew where by now, like it wanted to race out of her chest and pound after him.

She gulps hard, a lump already forming at the base of her throat.

“Do you know where he was sent? Or what he would be doing?”

Nicholas looks at her softly, sympathetically, but that was the last expression Jyn wanted from anyone now as her chest was thundering madly.

“It’s confidential, miss, no one but High Command know.”

“Oh.”

The word felt tiny, minuscule, not enough.

It was not enough; five months would never be enough.

And then deep down, so deep Jyn could barely see herself anymore, she realized with a sickening lurch that though her intentions may have never been those of courting nature. And yet, somehow without realizing it, she had slowly fallen for the American.

______

His name is Captain Nicholas, but everyone takes to calling him by Kay.

He was a sergeant amidst Cassian’s company until a recent injury that rendered him more suitable for desk work. But on top of everything else, he was completely head over heels for a particular girlfriend of Jyn’s.

“He is absolutely, gobsmacking, positively amazing!” Vivian gushes as she fingers her way through a meager assortment of dresses in her closet. Jyn watches from her perch on the end of her friend’s bed.

“Oh, Jyn, I never knew a better dancer than myself until Kay showed off one night. He could dance the Lindy-Hop _perfectly_ , I swear!”

______

Saw is the first to notice.

They sit across from each other as customary, each at a head of their old table. Their dinner is mediocre but what more could they do with such cutting rations as of late? Even Henrietta was flustering at the lack of availability.

Jyn was quiet now, her face stoic and reflecting the pallor of her woolen skirts and plain blouses that tucked in neatly. He watched one night as she picked more than actually ate her dinner, eyes unfocused and glazed.

“Child, whatever is the matter?” Saw asked hopelessly, wanting nothing more than to comfort her like he would when she was little, when she was still small enough to sit on his knee and he could bounce her back to glee.

Jyn shook out of her stupor like she was just beginning to be aware of their situation. She bit into a piece of potato and sighed slowly.

She dives headfirst back into her workloads. With no officer’s coffee to make her mornings start off divinely, she was beginning to feel like a real sodden piece of wool herself.

Even the Major notices the change in the ambiance. Cheery salutes in the morning when he walks in begin to turn nonchalant and quieter.

“Everything all right there Erso?” he asks one day as he leans against the frame of his office door, picking at his lip in quiet worrying discontent.

“Fine, thank you sir,” was the short and quiet response he got from behind the mounting piles of paperwork that awaited copying or filling out.

Three weeks without word from Cassian or his Rogue company sends Jyn into a spiral back into her quiet lifestyle. Lunches are spent in the company of other luncheoning women at the headquarters, who mostly gossip or complain about the impending workloads getting larger by the day. Afternoons are spent working extra hours to help pay for hopeful future university dream.

Five weeks into the absence, Vivian rushes to Jyn’s home half giddy with joy and hysteria. She practically thrusts her hand into the faces of whoever was closest to her, the tiny diamond ring glinting in the light.

“I’m engaged! I’m engaged!” she shrieks as she bounds from one end of Saw’s small living area to the other, laughing and giddy with excitement. Jyn laughs along, obviously happy for her friend. They twirl and squeal with so much delight Henrietta comes from across the street to complain about the noise disturbing her cat Federico’s sleep.

Saw watches delightedly from the kitchen doorway, congratulating Vivian on her announcement. He watches Jyn closely as the two young women begin laughing and pestering Henrietta for details about what a Polish wedding looked like. She may have been smiling the brightest in the room, but the light of the expression never quite meets his little girl’s dazzling green eyes.

______

Major Jameson offers her a few hours of extra pay if she stays behind to help him organize some maps carefully into folders and deliver them to the secretaries of the High Command generals. Jyn eagerly accepts, taking whatever extra pay she can get her hands on now that rations were beginning to rise a few cents in price. Chocolate was beginning to be sold again, too.

It was nearing nine o’clock when the Major let her go for the night. The next day was Sunday, a day of rest. Jyn was very much not looking forward to the late ride on the Tube, but it was all that was offered during these late hours.

Out of habit, she takes the back staircase to avoid any lingering soldiers in the lobby, preferring the quiet of the back halls.

Only tonight it was not entirely as quiet as it had been for almost three months. Something stops Jyn frozen solid, heart pounding quickly in her chest like a frantic drum, her ears straining to hear what her mind is refusing to believe. It was soft, almost too faint, she could have missed it just walking by.

It was the sound of a piano.

Her feet carry her towards the sound, down the familiar hallways of the headquarters that she could have memorized and traversed in the dark without aid. It got louder, steadily louder, and she half began to jog in her kitten heels.

He plays invigoratingly, unknowingly matching the tempo of Jyn’s spinning heart and mind. It was a sweet sound to hear after months of silence, months of cold grey memories plaguing her every day.

There were stitches lining the top corner of his hairline, just above his right eyebrow that threatened to merge with its mate as they came close together in frustration as he played diligently.

His shoulders were as strong as ever under his signature white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow and jacket slung over the end of the bench like the first time she caught him in this exact room.

“Cassian.”

His eyes shoot to hers, dark and beautiful and burning. The music stills and Jyn swears her heart is screaming louder than anything ever before.

He does not move from the bench when she throws her purse down onto the ground, the buckle clinking against the stone of the floors, her heels making similar sounds when she makes a beeline for Cassian.

There was nothing gentle in strokes of Jyn’s words, in the stories she had been writing since childhood when Saw first gave her a pen and pad. Nothing had been soft or passionate in their lives, nothing gifted or given.

But none of that mattered when Jyn cupped Cassian’s cheeks in her soft palms, breathed his name hastily one more time, then kissed him like he was the last breath of oxygen left in the entirety of the world.

Their noses bumped a little because it was not perfect, but it was _them_ , and nothing else mattered when Cassian regained his frozen senses and kissed her back like she was a million stars but did not care that he got burned.

Warm tears slip down her cheeks and Cassian does not for a second doubt to clean them away with his lips. He pulls her down close onto the bench so he can hold her in his arms, their faces bumping and their noses slanting against the other’s as they lean in again and again, whispering and kissing.

He whispers apologies against her skin, but she does not care, not now, not ever, not when he came back. Jyn tightens her arms around his neck when he decides to lean his head down against her forehead and one thought climbs through the listless thoughts wandering through her feverish mind.

Cassian came back; she had found home.

______

Saw was going to kill her.

And then Bodhi probably would, too.

That is what she repeats the following morning, the pool of nerves solidifying at the base of her stomach not even going away with the weight of Cassian’s arm across her bare skin.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Jyn cusses as she contemplates leaving the warmth of the blankets on Cassian’s bed. Their legs were tangled under the sheets, his arms keeping her close to his chest and her hair loose to stick statically to his pillows. She cusses even more when she realizes the time.

“I might as well just skip Mass,” she groans, trying to sit up. But Cassian was a persistent man when he knew both parties of the previous were too content to admit that they were comfortable enough to stay in bed for a little while longer. Jyn curls into his bare chest for a moment, his chin resting endearingly atop the crown of her head.

A moment later: “Shit, Saw’s still going to kill me for not coming home.” She makes to sit up again, pulling one of Cassian’s shirts from the ground. He makes a noise that was half human and half so content that Jyn nearly melts back under the sheets with him as she stands to pull the shirt over her head.

It hangs loose from her shoulders and nearly dwarves her tiny torso, but Cassian laughs at her from where he lies under the blankets, clearly trying to bait Jyn back into the warmth of bed.

Instead she laughs with him, crawls on her knees until she was just over him where he lay back on the mattress (he was back to staying at the Piccadilly, same small room that barely fit an extra chair, now that his company was back from their mission).

She was absolutely, positively, gloriously the most breathtaking creature he had ever lain eyes right there in that moment with her shoulder length cut hair tousled into their loose curls and out of their typical bun. Her face was the epitome of pure happiness and unfathomable love when she leans down to kiss him, soft and gentle.

She also does not stand a chance when he wraps his arms around her middle and flips her until she was a laughing mess under him. Not much after, his shirt was back on the ground where it belonged.

It does not get used the rest of the morning.

______

The red mug makes such a sudden reappearance on Jyn’s desk Monday morning that Major Jameson almost half-spits out his own coffee when he walks into the office. Jyn’s face was positively glowing with a happiness rarely witnessed anymore since casualties and reports became more frequent.

No one but Kay questions her reason to be so giddy that first day, so she tells him that she was simply happy that Captain Andor was back safe and sound from such dangerous missions away.

(She keeps for herself afterwards how he had sucked bruises along the apex of her thighs, or how she cut his name clean in half (Cass, Cass, oh right there _Cass!_ ), or how she had kissed his lips swollen throughout the morning.)

But the bubble of blooming warmth in Jyn’s chest does not last very long. In fact, it lasts a good week before Bodhi is coming home for a few days of leave. At the sight of his duffel by the door when she got home a week after Cassian’s homecoming, the bubble had burst.

“An Amercian?” Bodhi was bursting across the living area, his eyes lividly flashing back and forth from Jyn to the door and to Jyn again. He paced with hands on his hips and kept shaking his head over and over.

“When or how did this happen Jyn?”

“About a month ago,” she half-lies.

“Ok, ok… so it’s still an appropriate time for you to tell him you're not interested, which you need to do as soon as possible-,”

“No - no!” Jyn’s head whipped up since she had been staring at her bitten nails as Bodhi had paced. Her chest thrummed with vibrant anger at her brother, but above all, at his grudge against the entire American Army.

“Jyn, he is an American. You have to understand that he is just bored here, that he has no one but you or his friends to rely on.”

Jyn stood up then, fists clenched and heart thrumming to life.

“Bodhi, I don’t care if he is _bored_ or if he is in a foreign country. But if you haven't forgotten, the Yanks are here to _help_ us stop Germany.”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean ‘and then what?’ We win the war of course! They go home and we keep living our lives!”

“But though he's a foreigner, you still care for him? As a friend?”

“Yes, Bodhi, I do.”

“Then would you follow him back to America when he leaves?”

Her mind sputters to a halt, her heart searing through her chest and her mouth agape at a loss to what she could say. Bodhi takes her silence as an answer enough before pointing a finger at her, accusatory and demeaning.

“Jyn, do you love him?”

It wasn't Bodhi who spoke, but Saw, who emerged from the kitchen. His clothes were in disarray since his returning home from a tiresome day at the press. Ink stained the corner of his shirt and Jyn thinks about how hard she will have to scrub it out rather than face his cold eyes.

Her mouth opens again, but no words can come out. They were stuck at the back of her throat, like they were plastered there with glue.

“No, I don’t love him. But I care for him deeply.”

Bodhi scoffs. He shakes his head.

“In love with a Yank,” he growls as he makes for the door, hand grasping the straps of his duffel green bag and hauling it over his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” Jyn asked quietly.

“To Luke and Han’s,” he mutters as the door slams behind him in finality.

For a moment, they stand there in silence, stone still and unmoving in the wake of everything. The last thing Jyn wanted to do was face Saw.

But she does. She turns around and looks him directly in the eyes, her own threatening to spill over with tears. It was never supposed to be like this.

His eyes were calm and his hands hung exhausted at his sides.

Softly, he asks again, “Jyn, tell me child. Do you love him?”

He opened his arms to her when she started to shake, eyes red with soon to be shed tears and a sliver of guilt plaguing her stomach uncomfortably.

“I think I do, Saw, I think I do,” she muttered into the fabric of his shirt as she he held her close, petting her hair like when she was a child in need of comfort. She held him tightly, never wanting to let go.

______

They learn from the first time: take advantage of every moment given to them. He takes the advice down to the bones, practically bringing Jyn coffee every morning and letting her into his and Kay’s office for lunch every afternoon. Even Vivian takes to the luncheons, making it a usual of four crowded together around the two small desks pushed together in the center of the room for convenience.

They’d be damned to waste what little time they had together.

The movies provide a perfect weekend distraction, strictly on Saturday nights so Jyn can sneak away to his room at the Piccadilly for a few hours afterward and still make it to the Tube on time for the late train home.

There were small hand touches in the morning as they traded the coffee mug from hand to hand; there were quick pecks on the cheek in greeting at lunch; there was his arm across her shoulders as he walked her down the Tube each evening to see her off; there were chaste kisses on the lips instead of goodnights before she boarded the train.

“There are more troops leaving London,” Rosie complains one day as she drags Vivian and Jyn out for a walk during the only break to stretch their legs.

“They’re getting shipped out for training,” Jyn explains plainly as she rolls her ankle out on the curb they stand by. Trails of cigarette smoke waft from the pack of soldiers behind them who stay to themselves for once, talking in low voices and pointing towards the sky, cigarettes nestled in between their fingers.

Rosie watches them for a moment before focusing back on Jyn’s words.

“Kay is being deployed for training in three weeks. He was deemed fit for duty again,” Vivian grumbles somberly. Her fingers play nervously with the ring on her left hand, the promise between her and Kay resonating like sunlight.

“Isn’t Cassian going then, too?” Rosie asks, her eyes trailing back to the soldiers as they continue motioning to the sky. It was grey and very little light could waft through the rainclouds now that it was early October.

“He is the captain of Kay’s company. He has no choice,” Jyn muttered, kicking a pebble out into the middle of the street. It rolled out in the lane of an oncoming car. The tires of the car scatter the little rock, flinging it out until it bounces through the grate of a sewer drain and disappears from sight.

They had three weeks until almost three quarters of the troops were due to leave London for training in secluded, secret operation areas.

There was change brewing in the horizon, and like the pebble far beneath the city streets, Jyn’s heart was sinking with the weight of worry.

______

“What about my hair; it’s not falling into my eyes too much is it?” Cassian fusses as Jyn leads him down her childhood street towards Saw’s flat. She turns to flash him a look of adoring bemusement, pushes a few hairs from his forehead as they walk, but pulls his hand along nonetheless.

His green uniform was left behind instead for the more casual brown leather jacket Jyn loved to run her hands over so much, a pair of black military issue trousers, and his usual brown laced boots.

At least he shaved, thoroughly, this morning.

“You look fine, Cassian, truly,” she assuages him as they climb the few short wooden steps up to the door. Jyn reaches up to pat his cheek meekly with a grin as she turns the handle to push the door open.

Henrietta, Lord Bless her, forgets the pie for desert across the avenue in her oven. She hurries through an introduction to Cassian and a stern once over of his physique, double making sure he was healthy and whole to the eye.

“Nice polite, young man,” Henrietta comments with a grin of approval as she pinches Cassian’s cheeks, making him look ridiculous to Jyn’s delight. The older woman disappears out the front door a moment later after she had patted Cassian’s arm approvingly. He spends a moment rubbing his cheeks from red to a rosy pink of embarrassment, watching as Jyn fights off a laugh.

“Saw is in back getting coal for the oven from the lean-to,” Bodhi mutters in greeting as he comes into the living room, eyeing Cassian carefully as he would a stray or unworthy fiend.

Jyn stops laughing.

“Captain Cassian Andor,” her older brother continues, crossing his arms over his chest and planting himself like he was expecting a physical attack.

“You must be Bodhi, Jyn’s older brother. She has told me so much about you,” Cassian starts, reaching out a hand to politely shake hands.

Bodhi shook it, but that does not stop him from being tense in the head, Jyn notices quietly to herself.

Before anyone can say anything further, they feel it.

It was soft, so tiny of a change a feather could barely be affected. But Bodhi feels the low thud in the ground. Cassian hears the few picture frames adorning the walls around them shaking just enough, just a centimeter.

Bodhi was out the front door before Jyn could blink, Cassian right behind him. She was just about to follow out when Saw hurdles through the back kitchen door leading out to the lean-to, hands covered in black coal soot, eyes wide and fingers fumbling to put out the stove.

“Bombers!” he hollers so loudly the neighbors would probably hear him through the walls. “The bastards are coming!”

Without a second thought, Jyn races to her room upstairs. Her hands fumble through the mess on her desk as the telltale alarms begin howling through the area. People begin spilling from their homes in thin streams, children still holding their dinner spoons and adults wrapping them in wool coats and hats as they get pulled to the end of the street where the bunker was hidden beneath the ground.

“Jyn!” Cassian was shouting her name, but she keeps sifting through the desk, looking for the adorned box she kept so near to her heart.

He clambers up the stairs and runs into her just outside of her bedroom door. She grabs a coat on her way out and his hand with the other, the coat hooked on her elbow and eyes looking for Bodhi or Saw next.

“They’re helping everyone into the bunker,” Cassian tells her as he pats down his leg with a free hand and half-jogging with Jyn down the street. He fumbles with a pocket, so dark and flat against the fabric of his pants Jyn missed it, deftly pulling out a utility blade no longer than his middle finger.

He presses it into her pocket, just in case.

“I’ll stay and help. Get to the bunker!”

He lets go of her hand and kisses her quickly, too fast and too sloppy for Jyn’s worried pace. But she watches helplessly as he runs back down the way they just came, helping people to their feet if they tripped and getting them to closer to the bunker.

Directly overhead, the planes begin to circle like bloody birds circling in for their prey. Only now Jyn was the prey; innocent people were the prey; children were the prey.

She sprints.

The moment they are down in the bunkers, they are ordered to a corner of space and told to put their heads down. The ground shakes and the air shrieks with the sounds of descending fire. People flood into the bunker, some crying and others moaning in fear. It was chaos.

Minutes later, there was the telltale clicks of the bunker doors shutting and the sunlight wiping out. With minimal lamplight to help, Cassian picks his way through cowering forms with arms to over their heads until he finds her familiar blue woolen coat. Dust falls from the ceiling in bits and pieces like snow, clumping on their hair and their clothes alike.

She feels the press of a body half covering hers and she risks a glance over her shoulders. His face was inches from her bun, the majority of his body covering her from the falling debris.

People whimper with every bomb falling closer and louder above them, but Jyn breathes evenly and does not let her eyes falter from his face for a second. Somewhere she hears Saw telling everyone to keep quiet and lay low.

And just as suddenly as the rain had arrived, it ended.

______

It was gone.

Every building but a strong select few remained standing amidst the rubble. White and grey dust floats through where there was once a neighborhood, a safe haven for children to run around, one of the few homes Jyn had ever known in her life.

They emerge from the bunker on weak knees from poor blood circulation and probably the cleanest beings on the entire street. They stare at the shells of what were once their homes, their offices, their lives.

Soon, frantic calls begin going out.

“Sandra! Where did you go darling?”

“Nicholas, come back here immediately!”

“Mind the glass Peter!”

“Henrietta! Has anyone seen Mrs. Kowal anywhere? Henrietta!”

Bodhi was too busy helping a mother and her three frantically crying children, their hands grabbing at the ends of his coat sleeve, for him to notice Jyn’s head swaying and her prompt absence from the group.

Her feet carry her before she knows where she is going. Rubble litters the street, hot and some flaming from the blasts, but she goes around it. Her eyes were red and frantically looking from side to side, searching, not wanting it to be true. Her heart was slamming in her chest too loud to hear Cassian’s calling her.

Red was an incredible color that Jyn had often imagined when writing short stories about terrific murders, or painted her pages in lovely romances and endearing letters. Red was the color of death and the Nazi symbol.

There was blood trailing down the walkway as she turned to a flat she knew almost as well as her own, where she had escaped for Polish sweets as a child and dinner half of the week. The rubble was an immense heap, a landfill of wood and glass and awnings.

Federico, the orange tabby known for batting at local mice, now bat at the space where the front door had been. He was mewling and howling, scratching and sniffing like a madman.

Jyn pushed the cat aside with numbing hands. The tears began in earnest when the rubble kept falling like a landslide every time she moved a new piece away. The cat sat down beside her, helping with his paws starting to cake with mud and his pink nose drying from the white dust.

Little blonde strands of hair peek out from beneath a slab of wood and Jyn is frantic, cussing and pushing Federico out of the way when he paws at the strands helplessly.

“No, no, no!”

She was gasping for breath and covered in filth, hands bloodying from the rubble and her mind tearing to pieces, little by little, piece by piece.

“Jyn - stop!”

His hand pulls on her shoulder, shaking her out of the reverie but Jyn does not stop, will not, cannot. Cassian has to loop an arm around her waist and hoist her up from her scraped knees. The fabric of her dress was tearing with the more stress she put into moving the debris.

There was screaming and it took Cassian backing her away from the fallen building for her to realize it was her own. Her throat was sore and scratched but she screamed for Henrietta, the only mother she could remember, for everything lost to the war, for every person the Nazi’s empire had stolen from her life.

Lyra, Galen, Henrietta.

They were all gone in a brush’s stroke of red.

Bodhi watches with red rimmed eyes as Cassian falls back onto the ground, Jyn fighting his locked grasp and refusing to let her flailing body go.

He holds her down, in the middle of what was a street, covered in white dust and tears making trails down her cheeks, holding her as she screamed like there was no end. He never relents, not for a moment, not even when Jyn hits him to let her go in her furious lamenting.

He holds her because if no one else did, she would have burst into a million pieces then and there.

______

She wakes up to the cry of a baby. Its mother hushes it, sings a little lullaby, so that the cries peter out into comforted contentment.

There was a grey canvas tent over her head and Bodhi at the foot of the cot she was propped up on. Cassian’s leather jacket was bundled under her head like a makeshift. It smelled of coffee, his musk, and of dust. She herself was filthy and covered in grime. Bodhi’s hand on her ankle was warm.

There were so many cots, so many blankets spread out on the hard ground of the only half of the neighborhood that could be salvaged. Children and women alike sat around Jyn. Like her, they were covered in dust and grime, scrapes and blood, some even covered in makeshift splints. There was nowhere for them to go.

“The flat it ruined. Salvageable, but ruined.”

Her eyes meet his briefly and Bodhi taps his fingers against her leg like Cassian would a piano.

“Where will we stay?”

“You are better off staying with Cassian or Vivian for now. You told me she was sharing a flat with some friends?”

“She is.”

But she can already imagine the pressing looks of sympathy and tears that would await her if Jyn decided to stay with her friends.

Rosie would probably burn an attempt at making them dinner because she would be too emotional on Jyn’s behalf. Vivian would cry and hug Jyn nonstop, telling her how great Henrietta was to both of them since they were little, trying to be helpful and empathetic but really just suffocating Jyn in grief.

And Cassian?

He would be Cassian; whole, understanding, calm, collected and ready to help her back to her feet when she was ready.

______

**(1944 - French War Frontier)**

______

Somewhere along the front lines of the war, Cassian hunkers down for a few hours rest with Kay to watch over his back. Their rifles stay strapped to their backs no matter what, helmets always fastened lest an attack emerges.

Cassian tugs an arm over his eyes to drown out the dwindling light of the sunset. Operations were taking their tolls in slow droves. Men start groaning as they hunker close to the ground to roll out their sore muscles and fight the persistence pull to sleep.

In the distance, just on the edge of their scope’s vision, a French town sits nestled. Their next mission was to free and purge it of German occupation.

“What’s up Captain,” Kay sighs exhaustedly when he finds Cassian facing the town, laying on a bed of grass and dark rings under his eyes pronounced like never before. The sergeant leans his back up against the old tree trunk and lets the weight of his body drag him down. He plops down at the base of the tree, head tilted back but eyes focused on the town.

“Pissing tired, that’s what,” Cassian sighed.

In his mind’s eye, there was no war or smoking cities surrounding them constantly for a hundred mile radius.

There were the impressive fruit trees that surrounded his home city, the amazing smells of ripe fruits in the summer wafting through the hot summer breezes, enticing all in the area.

The sun was a magnificently blistering source of warmth. He remembers how the stones of the desert a few miles out of the city would still be warm to the touch even in the early hours of the night.

Cassian was terribly homesick.

More importantly, he was homesick for a person as well as a specific hometown. She drinks his coffee in the morning and buys him tickets to the occasional pianist gala that take place in London. Her eyes glittered that particular night against the vibrant red of her dress, always seen from every corner of the room. Pianos and European musicians be damned the moment he had her in his arms, swirling and smiling so coyly up at him.

He imagines a sun and a star, both burning him to a crisp, both a home.

______

She plays for him even when he was away on the front lines.

The benefit of living in the heart of London with her flatmates Rosie and Carina was that she could now leave work just a little later and not have to worry so much about missing trains out to her childhood neighborhood.

Sometimes, Jyn purposefully too the back staircase when she leaves her desk at the end of the day.

“I just need to clear my head for a little while,” she tells anyone who asks, telling them any lie to keep them from following her to the tiny room that was solely her’s and Cassian’s alone.

The keys felt cold and odd without his hands there to guide hers, but Jyn still likes the soft sound the instrument makes if she pushes down on an F. Major, or the lighter notes that twinkle at the top.

She could never master Cassian’s lividly intrinsic talent across the keys, but she slowly started teaching herself little snippets. The Star-Spangled Banner, Twinkle-Twinkle; she even makes up a tune by herself.

It was as if a piece of him was there in that room, in the music that softly reverberated against the boxes. The spot to her right remained empty and cold.

______

In the end, Cassian spots her first during the victory parade.

The throngs of civilians reuniting with their cherished soldiers overwhelms the entirety of London. People stop to shake his hands, complete strangers grateful for his services though they may never know how he served specifically. There was shouting and crying, laughter and flower petals being thrown from rooftops. It was complete pandemonium of the best sorts, he decides to call it.

Jyn stood with Saw as he lumbered to embrace a returning Bodhi, who was laughing more than Cassian had ever seen him. He was reaching for his little sister with tears in his eyes and the beaming smile of pride from Saw.

And then she saw Cassian making his way around a group of soldiers already getting tipsy with good company and champagne.

He never stands a chance when she bounds for his arms, a full force of bright energy and suffocating affection. He lets her kiss every inch of his face, both of them practically giddy with relief and reunited love.

But she kisses him on the lips like there was no more chances, like there was no tomorrow, because the European war front was coming to a close and Jyn would be damned to let her happy ending go.

He whispers the words so softly, so tenderly, Jyn almost misses them. But they run over her ears as easily as the music he plays and the smiles he pulls from her.

“Marry me, Stardust?”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments - pos or neg - are always enthusiastically loved!


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